Randomness and DC # 3.

It's Sunday morning and we are about to leave for church (we being my family and I). After church I get to have lunch with a friend. This is the friend that I went on a date with about a week ago. I don't think I mentioned said date here but it was very fun. It's nice to date someone just to date. No love, blah blah mushy stuff. Just a guy buying a girl dinner and two people enjoying each others company.

Here's a few more DC pictures for your perusal

Adam makes me happy.

So for the first time in a few years, I decided to follow American Idol. Right now the competition is down to the top 9. Last night someone went home that I really thought didn't deserve to but hey it happens. I have already picked a winner in my brain and I'm going to be so sad if he doesn't win. My choice?











Adam Lambert. That's right gay rocker dude that wears too much eye makeup. He decided to go for a more manly look in his last performance and well he stole my heart. He has an incredible voice that can do so many things. In his last performance he sang Tracks of my Tears and it gave me chills. If he wins I can see him being as big of a winner as Carrie Underwood or Kellie Clarkson.







What do you think?

Yvonne

P.S. I'm really glad he ditched the nail polish.

Word Association?

I was browsing through facebook today looking at various friends pages and I noticed something. The majority of the freshmen college students on my friends list have something in common. They all have their political views listed as liberal. It kind of made me chuckle at first but then it kind of started to upset me.

Then I started thinking about the word liberal. What is the first thing that people think of when they hear the word liberal? Well it kind of depends on your environment so let's take it from a Christian perspective. The minute a Christian hears the word liberal they cringe (don't deny it I've seen it happen). There are very negative connotations to the word. If you're talking politics you instantly think the liberal supports abortion, gay marriage, and taking away your guns. If you're talking about churches you instantly think the pastor doesn't have any standards and anything goes. But is this an appropriate view of the word liberal? College students hear liberal and because we have placed these bad connotations on it, it appeals to them because they feel they can use their "political views" to justify their wild behavior. Again I have to ask is this appropriate?

How many of these young people know what it means to be a political liberal? How many of you that call yourselves conservatives know what it means ot be a political conservative?

Taking it agian from the Christian perspective, when a christian hears the word conservative they smile and instantly associate themselves with the conservative sect. One automatically thinks that to be a conservative means you are a pro-life, God fearing, gun toting (or at least supporting), homophobic republican.

Now I'm not saying that it's good or bad that these young people call themselves liberals. I just wish that people would become more educated before declaring a political viewpoint. I was guilty of doing the same thing. I'm a Christian so therefore I must be a conservative republican. Upon educating myself on the true meanings of these words though I have discovered that while I still support the republican party I am in fact a liberal.

Did you know that it was the conservative movement that fought against freedom of religion? The state should use religion as a method of controlling the masses. In other words the state should decide what religion you practice. It was the liberal movement that fought against religious conformity.

I'm just throwing out a random fact about the conservative movement. There are some great merits to the conservative movement but there are also some great things about the liberal movement. That's why I love the fact that we have a mixed government.

I've heard Christians make the joke that democrats can't go to heaven. I'm going to change the wording of that a little bit because I think that's a bit harsh. Do you think that in order to be a Christian you have to be a conservative? I'm interested in knowing what you think.

I realize I have rambled here but I do that often. I promise that pictures of DC are on their way!

Yvonne

DC Trip Blog #2

So I'm back from D.C. and it was so amazing. I had a blast! I didn't get to post pictures because the internet wasn't working at the hostel where I was staying. That's right I said hostel not hotel. A hostel is an interesting experience. If you've been to church camp it's a little bit like that. If you've never been to church camp then you need to stay in a hostel at least once in your life. Anyway I've got pictures coming. I'll post a couple right now but I'll do a bunch more later.

My first daytime glimpst of the capitol.

Riding the escalator into the subway. Don't be an escaleftor or you will become an escalump.

Standing in front of the eternal flame of JFK. It's raining and it still burns I love that.

DC Trip Blog #1

Ok we are at the airport. I went to Conway this morning and picked up Zack and Tiffany and we all went and ate lunch at Old Chicago. Now we are at the airport way too early but that's ok we're excited! I'll try to post pictures everyday but we'll see how that goes :)

This is Zack and TIffany. I love these people!!!!! We're just sitting in the airport at the starbucks waiting on the rest of our group to arrive.

Talk to you soon!

Yvonne

3 days to go woohoo!!

I know the countdown says to but the countdown lies and I don't know why! I told it that lying was bad but it doesn't seem to care. So anyway. 3 days to go and I'll be flying to Washington DC. I'm going to have such a great time. I'm going to do like I did last time and try to blog during the week to keep you updated on how much fun I'm having so you can be jealous . . . er I mean enjoy the trip with me. I know when I was in Scotland my "daily" blog only happened like twice but hopefully I'll be able to actually do it this time!

I was looking back on past blogs and I can't believe that I've been blogging for almost 3 years now!! I also can't believe I wrote some of that stuff! It's been a fun 3 years though I love blogging it's such an awesome way to vent.

Anyway that was totally random and has nothing to do with DC. We fly in really late on Saturday night and coming in Late on Thursday evening. It's kind of a short trip but I plan on making another trip back for a much longer period of time. There is so much to see and do and I'm not going to have a chance to do it all while I'm there.

Anyway I'm going to stop talking now because I'm not really saying anything.

Talk to you later!!

Yvonne

Only 5 more days . . . Can I take a 5 day nap?

I'm at work and I'm super bored. I'm counting and recounting the days until I go to Washington DC. I just realized that I don't have my 15 minute presentation ready that I'm suppose to give when we get there. Oops. I guess I better get started. I'm doing it on the world war II memorial and I'm rather ticked that it has to be so long. The amount of actually classwork that we have to do for this trip is way more than what we have to do in the London class. In the london class we have to write a 1-2 page paper and give a 5 minute presentation on it. I'm doing Abbey Road the famous Beatles crossing. In DC we have to prepare a 15 minute presentation on some monument or building that we will be visiting and then when we get back from DC we have to write 10 page paper on that same topic. It's not fair really. We pay the big bucks for these field studies so we don't have to work!!!!! Oh well it will still be a great trip.

Looking somewhere else when it's right in front of you.

I was sitting in my World Conflict & Terrorism class the other day and someone said something that made me have this thought. We had just convinced the professor to move our test back a couple of days so we wouldn't have to take it yesterday and so we decided to have a round table discussion on the two essay questions that were going to be on the exam.

At the beginning of each semester, we stand in really really long lines at the bookstore and we buy text books. For most of the classes they are required. Each book costs around $50 to a $100 dollars and maybe more. When I was a freshmen I rarely had to use the books so I just wouldn't buy them but now that I'm an upper level student I absolutely have to read my text books in order to make A's in my classes. What's the point of me telling you this? Well keep reading I'll get to that.

We were discussing state run terrorism vx. state sponsored terrorism and some people just weren't getting it. One student starts talking about how they were "studying" for this exam and she kept saying I was doing research online and I found this . . . or I found that. Or such and such website says this. I look over at her table and she has a book for the class but you can tell it's never been opened. By this point in a semester my books are all marked up and have a billion of those little colored tabs sticking out everywhere. So anyway I spoke up and said something to the effect of "the book sums it up like this" and after I got through speaking the student that had been looking all over the internet for the answers was like Oh that makes so much sense!

I have never understood the concept of paying that much money for a book and then not using it. It makes NO sense to me at all. It's a book that you KNOW is going to have the answers in it. Generally, unless the professor just stinks at picking books it's going to be a book that explains the concepts very well.

Yes if you're writing a 20 page paper you have to use outside resources but for an exam all of your answers are found in the text book or handouts that the professor gives you.

I think that sometimes people do this in other areas of life as well especially spiritually. We have a Bible it's Gods word. Believe me it holds all the answers! So why don't we use it??? If you are having a hard time understanding something in a text book you can always go to a professor for further explanation. If you cant understand something in the Bible talk to a pastor and ask for his understanding or better yet pray and ask God to open your understanding to his word.

The point I am trying to make is this. You have some of the best resources right in front of you as a Christian young person and if you actually make use of those you'll have no trouble passing lifes tests. You don't have to hunt for the answers they are right in front of you in your Bible (the text book) and in your spiritual leaders (kind of like the handouts we get in class).

I don't know if that makes any sense or not but read the Bible it's pretty much awesome. If you're a collge student either read the text books or stop wasting $300-$600 a semester on them!!

Yvonne

YAY!!!!!!!

So I'm the president of RHA. I love being involved on campus it's so awesome. Anyway every year RHA hosts a karaoke contest and I always participate. Well being the president this year I wasn't sure how well it would go over if I planned the contest and competed as well. So I decided I'll do all the advertising and I'll let my Vice President take care of securing all of our judges that way no one could accuse me of anything suspicious.

The contest was last night. We had an AMAZING turnout!!! we served mocktails all night long. We set up a little bar and everything and the students LOVED it!

I'm not trying to toot my own horn but the last few events I've had have had really good turnouts but yet SAB (Student Activities Board) the group that has about $40,000 per semester to spend has a hard time getting people to come to events. I figured out why. When I advertised for this karaoke contest as well as most of my other events, I flooded this campus with about 1,100 flyers. I also had about 10 e-mails sent out reminding people about it. I had a sheet sign hung (though it seems to have dissappeared along with my stakes . . . stinkin thieves). I even hosted an open mic karaoke night about 2 weeks prior to the event just so I could remind people to come out. You know what SAB does when they have an event? They send out TWO e-mails. One of them goes out about 3 or 4 days before the event and the other one goes out the day of. Now keep in mind that these e-mails are going to the student e-mail accounts. Students are suppose to check this everyday but guess what . . . THEY DONT! I would guess that a vast majority of the students don't utilize the free e-mail account they are given when they come to UAM because they already have their own personal accounts set up when they get here. So yeah that's what SAB does to advertise. It's very interesting.

Now on to the really important stuff. The contest was super long. We should have planned things just a little better as far as the rounds of competition went. It was a lot of fun though we had quite a few contestants (I think like 25). We had an audience of well over 100 students (that's a lot for this campus believe me!). It was so much fun. I worked behind the bar when I wasn't singing. The first round was a fun round that no-one got eliminated in. I got second place for the girls in that round. The way it worked was all the guys had to sing a song that was originally done by a female artist and all the girls had to sing a song that was originally done by a male artist. I sang "Hey there delilah" by the Plain White T's. It was kind of funny but hey it got me second for the round and a 10 dollar gift card.

Now in the second round I sang because of you. I ended up in third place at the end of that round. At the end of the second round the top 8 got to advance to the final round. The points errased for each of the 8 contestants. I was the third person to sing and I sang a song called "Right to be Wrong" by Joss Stone. I got a total of 80 points for the round and I was pushed into first place. I was nervous at that point because I really really wanted to win. I've been trying for first place for 3 years now. Anyway I kept having friends go look at the scoreboard because I was too chicken. It was down to the last two singers. Tiffany a friend of mine who won first last year and a guy who's name I can't really remember. When Tiffany got through singing Errin comes up to me and says "how much do you love Tiffany." I was like aww did she beat me again? She hadn't. We were tied for first place!!!! Now when we planned the rules for the contest no-one thought about a tie breaker so Tif and I didn't know what the judges were going to do in order to determine a winner. We were standing there doing the whole Miss America Pagent thing and hugging each other when they were announcing the winners lol. Well anyway they went all the way back to the first round and added up the points from the judges in that round to see who the winner was. I was ahead by about 11 points and so . . . . I WON!!!!! I'm so stinkin happy!!!!! I FINALLY won a karaoke contest. I place in the top 3 every year but I wanted to be number one!! The prize? A $200 wal-mart gift card. YAY!!!!!!